FreeBSD's Visual Identity: Outdated?

[John-Mark Gurney]

Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg wrote this message on Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 01:57 +0100:
> >Aesthetics are not everything, the web site does what its supposed to
> >do. Also i actually like how it looks.
> >A lot of people have strong feelings about all these all singing all
> >dancing webistes. There is just no need. Keep it simple and easy to
> >navigate around thats all thats really important. If the aesthetics
> >really matter more than function to such people who use BSD then they
> >would probably be not using BSD but either windows or linux, where you
> >have a nice pretty GUI to look at all the nice pretty sites.
> 
> This is where I think a lot of people simply does not understand the 
> problem.
> Im a FreeBSD user. I like FreeBSD because it does not have all the 
> flashy installers and pretty GUI's that many linux distros seems to 
> have today. But still, Ive been screaming for years for someone to 
> improve the website. Why?
> Anyone that has stood in front of a boardroom full of CEO's or similar 
> and tried to promote the use of FreeBSD in a big organisation knows 
> why. They might like all the facts about the os, the rock-solid 
> stability, the lightning-fast performance and its solid reputation as 
> a server os, but one look at the website and they will run screaming 
> towards the nearest linux advocate instead.
> We, the users, might not care about our image, but if we want to be 
> taken seriously by the rest of the world we better do something about it!
> 
> [snip]
> >>4. There should be some kind of FreeBSD business card and letterhead
> >>  available to all that support this project.
> >
> >
> >I have to ask why? why would people need such things? that i just dont
> >understand
> 
> Clearly, you have not tried to "sell" FreeBSD to a big corporation.

Then we should create a website www.freebsdforcxo.com and use that.
The problem is that the base FreeBSD.org website should remain as it
is.  It is targeted to technical people who might not be running a GUI
web browser and want quick access to information.

Making it more pretty to sell, while destroying the usability for 99%
of the audience is not a solution.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."